annieology

I like stuff.  Stuff is fun.

I don’t know if it is age, or maturity or the fact that 90% of the stuff in the mall would look ridiculous on me.  But I’ve gotten to the point where a few nice things give me more joy than many things.

I would rather have a comma in the bank statement at the end of the month than any other thing.  My dream, one day, is to have two commas.  Actually my dream one day is to GIVE two commas.

Other than getting my nails done, and my hair cut, I don’t spend a whole lot of money.  I do have one lone hold out.  If something is purple, it is the universe’s way of telling me that it is mine.  I have a purple phone, purple shoes, many purple tops, purple blanket, purple pillows, the list goes on and on.

One of the things that makes it easy for me to avoid purchases that would have historically been difficult to resist, is that nothing costs less than $5 for me.  A single Coke is $5 – a candy bar – a magazine.  I only spend cash.  I never use change and only in the most dire of circumstances will I use a $1 bill.  The bills go into hiding for emergency pizza’s or impromptu dessert dates.  Each day I empty my purse of change and put it in the piggy bank that we feed when the littles do their chores.  We empty it  out monthly and split the money between the littles for their “allowances” and their money training.  The change usually adds up to about $45/month and the kids are quite happy that they “earned” a $15 toy.

Other things I do to save money?  Extreme couponing, for products I always use.  Stocking up when things are on sale.  Our car is paid for, but I’m making the “average car payment”  which according to Dave Ramsey is $484 – we round up to $500.  We also pay ourselves an extra house payment.  When we get a well established emergency fund, we’ll start making the extra payment to the bank.

I pay bills in the order of priority.  I don’t know if this matters financially speaking, but it has some sort of spiritual affect on how I view money.

1. Tithe or charitable giving – but we tithe.  We put others first, realizing that no matter our need, others need too.
2. Household expenses – mortgage and utilities.  We take care of our responsibilities.
3. Savings – retirement of 15% gross, saving for car, saving towards emergency fund, extra house payment, necessary home repairs, vacations.  We plan for our future.

After those priorities are taken care of, I take the rest of the money out bank.  Leaving only money for gas, as I love to pay at the pump, and $1,000 as a mini emergency fund.  The remaining money is split up between food, allowances, and miscellaneous day to day items.  Because we know we have excess, we have food here.  If it were questionable, I would put food at number two.  What good is a vacation if you are starving?

We put all of our day to day expenses into envelopes and spend that money only on what the envelope was intended for.  Things like kid clothes and car maintenance/repair.  We add money to these envelopes every pay check.  Ideally, Hubby and I don’t need to discuss day to day money events any further.  If he needs a weed eater, and there is money in the “outside” envelope to cover it, no discussion needed.  He just writes on the envelope what he spent the money on.  The same with kid clothes.  I don’t need to discuss whether or not I can get one of the kids a new pair of shoes.  If the money is there the answer is yes.

The only other money decision that has had as big an impact as the budget, has been the cutting up of the credit cards.  Working without a net requires your attention and diligence.  When there is no net, you are forced to create a cushion.   I will clarify, as I always do, that we have ONE card in my husband’s name. We use it exclusively for online purchases.  We have been burned twice on fraudulent debit charges.  It’s in his name only by my choice.  He is not keeping me down.  I trust that he has more interest in my well being than Mastercard.

Doing things this way has been very beneficial to our marriage and to our finances.  Hubby and I give ourselves a fairly generous allowance.  I don’t care about how much he spends on Frisbees, he doesn’t care that I spend too much on my hair care.  We have three budget meetings a month when we get paid and I can’t remember the last time we had a fight about money.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Frugal Living, Kindle, Tithe, annieology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.